"Talk to Me" - Film Review
An embalmed hand covered in creepy, scrawled, nonsensical phrases. You grasp it, say the magic words “talk to me,” and suddenly you have a direct line to the spirit world. Throw in a bunch of teenagers desperate for adrenaline and something to do on a Friday night and what could go wrong?
Obviously, lots of things go wrong for the teens of Talk to Me. Mia (Sophie Wilde) is honoring the two-year anniversary of her mother’s death with a small remembrance party hosted by her father (Marcus Johnson). Since her mother died, Mia’s relationship with her father has become nonexistent and she finds solace with her best friend, Jade’s (Alexandra Jensen), family. Together with Jade’s younger brother (Joe Bird), Mia and Jade attend a party hosted by Hayley (Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio). They’ve amassed quite a presence on social media with their videos of partygoers who are seemingly possessed after holding an embalmed hand. Mia, desperate to get out of her own head, agrees to hold the hand. This small act invites much more chaos than she could have anticipated.
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Talk to Me is being heralded as the scariest movie of the year, and it’s a distinction the film has rightly earned. The movie relies on a stifling, overwhelming sense of dread that covers the audience. It’s like a weighted blanket that grows heavier and heavier until the weight becomes unbearable. Directors Danny and Michael Philippou don’t rely on musical stingers or jump scares. They put the power in the script (written by Danny and Bill Hinzman) and their actors. The terror of the film is in lead actor Wilde’s eyes. Her turn as Mia is pitch-perfect, a stunning tour de force that displays nearly every emotion a human can experience. The rest of the cast is an excellent display of young Australian talent, but Talk to Me is Wilde’s role to run away with.
Perhaps what makes Talk to Me stand out is its bleakness. Without giving away the ending, there is no happily ever after that awaits Mia. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel for her. Maybe that’s a bit of a spoiler because there’s been a recent uptick in the trend of horror movies to teach something, to impart some hope to their audiences. That could be a direct reflection of the effects quarantine has had on our collective psyches, leaving us all craving some glimmer of goodness in the world. Maybe Talk to Me is just the next logical step. An acceptance of the crushing despair that seems to permeate everything we touch, the personification of doom-scrolling. Isn’t that why the kids all play with that embalmed hand to begin with? For a rush of something that alleviates the hopelessness. You can read that as an allegory for any number of things, including the way desperation encourages people to lean into their demons.
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For all of the film’s weightiness, Talk to Me is outright hilarious at times, but not in the way one might expect. Its humor doesn’t come from winking at the audience in some meta way, but from the way teenagers joke around with each other. The cast’s chemistry is divine and it’s almost a shame that Talk to Me isn’t a teen comedy. In the beginning, it’s easy to forget that there’s something sinister on the horizon when the audience is watching the teens being embarrassed by Jade and Riley’s overbearing mother (Miranda Otto). Had the Philippou brothers not absolutely nailed the film, the loss of levity as things progressively get worse might have impacted the overall experience, but lucky for us, that’s not the case.
Talk to Me already has a sequel in the works, and so much goodwill that the announcement of a forthcoming follow-up isn’t immediately groan-inducing. It will be interesting to see where things go from here because, refreshingly, the film didn’t end with questions that need to be answered. Sure, the ending left some room to play around in this world, but nothing urgent. Nevertheless, Talk to Me is a striking debut feature from the Philippou brothers. Gripping from the beginning and unrelenting in its terror, Talk to Me will surely be the source of nightmares for many.
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